RussellHltn wrote:That's really an individual member's preference. I'm sure there are others that are quite the opposite.
By better I mean least likely to get a hostile reaction. Calling a cell phone at
inconvenient time, using minutes when landline will do, or when cell meant only
for urgent matters has decent odds to make a person unhappy. Calling a home
landline when the person is not home is not 'better in the sense it will get directly
to the person quickly', but 'better in the sense that it's much less likely the person
answering will feel like the caller should not have called'.
So it occurs to me to wonder how to resolve when people don't want to
get calls on their cell when the household number will do. 'Contact Phone'
prefers cell over household phone.
One way would be to have a second 'Contact Phone' that prefers household
phone over individual phone. However this seems to only complicate the issue
and depends on the unit to use it in a way that actually solves something.
A better way seems to be to have a checkbox when entering individual phone
numbers, labeled something like "use as 'contact number' instead of household
phone". The box is checked depending on the person, of course, and then
the contact number column can be reliably used as the normal phone number.
You're absolutely right, it's an individual's preference, except without this MLS has
no way to record the person's preference, only the raw information of which phone
is the shared/household phone and which is direct to the individual, leaving the
caller to make the assumption (if both are printed) or MLS programmers to make
the assumption (with the 'contact number' field as it is now)
For maximum flexibility, do both! Call the new field 'Secondary Contact Phone', have
it be the opposite of whatever the regular contact field was. Then there will be two
phone numbers to choose from, and they can be printed as: always the household
and always the individual, or printed as which to call first (contact phone) and which
to call when necessary (secondary contact phone).
